Just nuts! Media go berserk over Trump's new word for Hillary

Critics apoplectic, but forget their own potty-mouthing

Donald Trump only needed a single Yiddish word for the mainstream media to once again go apoplectic over his campaign: "Schlong."

The Republican presidential front-runner unleashed an attack line against Hillary Clinton Monday night that had media outlets essentially framing it as a "macaca" moment. Former Virginia Sen. George Allen's 2008 presidential bid imploded after he called an opposition researcher "macaca."

"She was going to beat Obama. I don't know who would be worse, I don't know, how could it be worse? But she was going to beat – she was favored to win – and she got schlonged, she lost, I mean she lost," Trump told an audience in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

A litany of media outlets rushed to condemn Trump's remarks. Some of the headlines include:

The Guardian: Donald Trump's 'schlong' remark just telegraphs the man's own insecurities

Fox News decided to censor the word on its broadcasts as anchor Shepard Smith (who once had to apologize for saying "f--k" on live television), announced, "Donald Trump is not backing down ... using a crude and vulgar word we will not repeat on television and won't even allow him to say. ... Trump got personal, very personal. The word we bleeped I've never heard before used as a verb," added Smith.

"Trump was saying Hillary got shafted by Obama. It's no more complicated that," Limbaugh said Tuesday. "She got schlonged, she got shafted. Don't wait for the media to explain it to you. They're so far up the reservation on this. They're looking for dirt where there isn't any dirt. They're looking for something to discredit. He just said she got shafted by Obama. It happens to be true. It's more newsworthy than simply saying she got beat. She got schlonged. She got shafted. Makes perfect sense to those of us who know."

He added, "I never imagined 27 years ago, 30 years, I never, ever imagined I'd be discussing 'schlonged' on the radio, especially during Christmas week, but, I mean, it's an indication of where our culture has gone."

Harvard University’s Steven Pinker, a researcher on language and cognition, told the Washington Post it was possible Trump misspoke.

"Headline writers often ransack the language for onomatopoeic synonyms for 'defeat' such as drub, whomp, thump, wallop, whack, trounce, clobber, smash, trample, and Obama's own favorite, shellac (which in fact sounds a bit like schlong). So an alternative explanation is that Trump reached for what he thought was a Yinglish word for 'beat' and inadvertently coined an obscene one," Pinker told the newspaper.

Clinton campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri did not interpret Trump's wording as an accident. She called the "schlong" line "degrading language" and asked others to respond on Clinton's behalf.

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It remains to be seen whether the billionaire's comment will hurt him with Republican primary voters. Trump has led in national polls since August despite claims his rhetoric on illegal immigration, radical Islamic terrorists and President Obama's refugee program would sink his campaign.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday shows Trump still leading nationally with primary voters at 28 percent to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s 24 percent.

Pollsters interviewed 508 Republicans from Dec. 16 through Dec. 20 for their survey, which has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.